Ohio and Kent State

Ohio and Kent State were far away from Australia. But like America, the Vietnam war hung like a noose around the collective neck of the Nation. We were fired by a cause, an innocence born out of a belief that a voice could be louder than the gun. Banners and protest choked the commerce of cities, chants rose like prayers to drown out drums. Governments saw something dangerous in the swelling power of the young. Then bullets tore into the dream. The images of death that had for years soaked television screens with the blood of Vietnam, had come home. Innocence was lost. Our generation are old men and women now, picking over the bones of our dreams. Some of us still know the words of Neil Young's anthem, ‘Ohio’, or Redgum’s ‘I was only 19’, see the images of war still bleed across our television screens.